Southampton FC implements unique queue-busting smartphone app

Premier League club Southampton Football Club (Saints) is implementing Qjacker™ from Verteda Ltd (formerly Agilysys Europe Ltd) at St Mary’s Stadium, enabling fans to pre-order food and refreshments from their smartphone or desktop – and so avoid queues at concession stands in the public concourse areas.

Jochen Hartmann, Director of Commercial Operations at the Club, said:

Southampton FC originally chose Verteda as a strategic partner because we wanted to improve customer service, increase sales and have the ability to tailor our offerings. Qjacker is part of our on-going commitment to offer more to fans and ensure we can deliver a consistently excellent customer experience.

With a capacity of more than 32,500, St Mary’s is a UEFA 4-star rated stadium and is the largest football stadium in the south of England outside of London. In addition to busy concession stands in the public concourse areas, St Mary’s has 47 Executive Boxes, serving up to 500 VIPs, plus six dedicated hospitality suites and lounges with a combined capacity of over 1,350 guests.
The unique Qjacker app, downloaded for free in the App stores or at www.qjacker.com, enables people to pre-order in-venue snacks and refreshments online or using their smartphone. With Qjacker, the customer’s smartphone becomes, in effect, another POS terminal: a secure extension of the venue’s food and beverage operations.
Time and motion studies have shown Qjacker enables stadia to better cope with “pinch points” and serve as many fans as possible in limited time frames: in-venue studies showed reductions in serving time from 10 minute’s queuing to only 40 seconds. Stand-a-lone of fully integrated with Verteda’s InfoGenesis POS, Qiacker creates new opportunities for operators to tap into latent revenue within their stadia, arena or entertainment venues, helping generate 5-10% of incremental sales for every event – and 20-30% increase in customer spend.
Saints fans will be able to download and use the Qjacker app on a trial basis.

Hartmann said prior to the trial:

We are trialing Qjacker on 18th October, with up to six dedicated Qjacker lanes. By enabling pre-orders, our objective is to better support our serving staff, further increase speed of service and reach more fans in limited time windows.

Verteda Ltd’s Sales Director, Trevor Roberts, added:

We are delighted Southampton FC is extending its investment in Verteda’s innovative technology. One of the biggest frustrations for sports fans and concert goers is queuing for refreshments. We created this smartphone app so fans can pre-order before a match or event, from their desktop or a smartphone. Our surveys have confirmed we are creatures of habit and revealed most orders are placed as far out as 24 hours in advance of the event and whilst en-route to the venue – fans then collect their order with no fuss and no wait. Our primary goal is to help our customers deliver an even better fan experience at their venue and where we are achieving this the commercial returns have looked after themselves.

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